Are You Kosher? (5 page)

Chapter 10

Where Did I Come From?

There are a great many tales, myths, and half-truths full of dreck explaining where vampires came from and how they originated. I cannot attest to the validity of any of this mishegas, but I can tell you what I know to be true concerning where I came from.

Many very famous authors today claim to be experts on the subject of my kind, and I can only say that I don’t recall ever seeing any of them at local functions such as midnight feastings, cholent in Bubbe’s dining room, or bake sales. A lot of what you read will have you convinced that our whole existence is based upon ritual bloodsucking. To a very small extent, they are correct, although I am not too fond of the word “ritual.” Some will say that we are the aftereffect of some kind of black-magic—not even close. Others will claim that the devil is somehow involved; perhaps to a small extent he is, but I’ve never been a fan of his to begin with so I just dismiss that thought immediately. My peers will have you believe that we are no different from mortals and were created in G-d’s image; we are just the lucky ones. That one is funny. Listen to me very carefully. Being a vampire is a wonderful thing but it is also a royal pain in the tuchas! If vampires were directly created by G-d, there would certainly be a hell of a lot more of us.

The farthest back I can personally remember is about two hundred years before Noah. Yes, that Noah, the one with the ark.

It was a time of great turmoil in the world. There were these huge
farkakteh
shmucks called Nephilim who just did not know how to behave themselves and were causing people to wonder if there even was a G-d. It was sort of like when Kevin Costner made his ill-fated attempt at playing Robin Hood.

I was not yet a vampire, but my mother and Bubbe were. When Morty came around, the shit really started to hit the fan. Every meshugenah and his bubbe were coming out of the woodwork with their own opinion on what they should do.

Morty started holding meetings on a regular basis telling everyone who had an ear and some free time on their hands how he had the answer and it all rested with Tsvi the Dominant. That was his self-appointed name, by the way. Bubbe used to call him Tsvi the Shmendrik. I know what you’re thinking. You don’t even know him and you can just tell that shmendrik is a better name than dominant.

Tsvi was the follower of another who had learned the secret to immortality through the act of drinking another’s blood. I really can’t go into too much more detail about this due to an oath that I took. That and the fact that if Bubbe finds out I blabbed, I’ll have to answer to her, and she still wields a mighty wooden spoon.

Eventually, Bubbe, my mother, and I were converted to Vampirism. It was an interesting experience to say the least, but I will go into more detail on that subject later. It’s not an easy thing to talk about. In fact, it is almost as painful as watching Adam Sandler’s
Eight Crazy Nights
.

Tsvi and Bubbe did not get along practically from the moment they met. She is a very strong-willed woman, if you haven’t picked up on that already. And Tsvi was convinced that the only reason I was around was to take over, so he wanted to control me and make me, for lack of a better term, his bitch. Bubbe was having none of that. If nothing else, that woman is like a mama grizzly bear and I am her cub. If he even so much as looked at me, she was all over him, spewing insults that I personally wrote down just so I would not forget them.

He finally decided that the goal of all vampires was to attack all non-vampires and to ostracize those who would not conform to the rules that he had set forth as the self-proclaimed leader of our kind. Bubbe and some of her closest friends refused to listen to the blather of this irrepressibly ignorant shmendrik and decided that they would go on carrying out their lives as they had been. They would still feast on the blood of others, but they would also continue to enjoy the bounties of the culinary world that they had enjoyed for so long. They were unwilling to ignore the pleasures of falafel, matzo brie,
hamantaschen
, and, of course, the properly cooked brisket.

“But Izzy, there was no such thing as brisket back then,” you’ll say. Oh yeah? Well, fuck you! There was no
you
either, so how the hell do you know what I was eating?

“Izzy, you still haven’t explained where you came from,” I can hear you saying. All I have to say is that it sucks to be you. Remember, I am still Jewish and I will always be looking to turn a coin any chance I get. Nowadays, book deals are huge, especially if you can get a movie deal out of the venture. I can just see Hugh Jackman playing me, the sexy goy that he is.

The basic truth is that I have a lot of dreck to cover and a whole lot of stories to tell, and I am not about to shoot my wad in the first ten chapters. If you like what you’ve read so far, then keep reading. All I can say to you at this time is that the actual origins of not only my existence, but that of the vampire race, will be revealed at the appropriate time. Patience, my friends. Trust me, it’s worth it. By the time I’m through with you, all of your questions will have been answered, and you will never think of gefilte fish the same way again.

Chapter 11

Pork:
A Jewish Vampire’s Confession

Up to this point, I feel that we have covered some pretty interesting topics, viewpoints, and personal observations. I’ve also tried, to the best of my ability, to be painfully honest. After all, what do I have to lose? These are my memoirs, after all, so I am the one who decides what is relevant and what is not.

That being said, in the interest of honesty and integrity, I’ve decided to divulge to you my deepest and darkest secret. The one that will probably shock you. The one that under no circumstances whatsoever are you to ever repeat to my mother, or G-d forbid, Bubbe. She will kill me and probably you for knowing about it. It’s bad enough that I am breaking the Sabbath by writing in the first place, but this one secret will send the old woman into hysteria.

For the last thirty-eight years, I have been a connoisseur of the wonderful world of pork.

That’s right. My name is Izzy Glassman, and I am a pork addict.

It feels so good to finally say that out loud, yet I feel so dirty.

“But Izzy, you told us not so long ago that when you were feasting on Julia Rubenstein, it made you ill, that she had apparently been eating pork.” This is true and a very valid point, my friends, but the truth of the matter is that just two short years after that incident, I was indoctrinated into the sinful pleasures of the swine and realized that what actually made me sick was not that she had been eating pork, but that she had eaten bad pork. From what I understand, she, too, vomited later that evening.

I have mentioned my friends Shlomo, Jerry, and Dartavius Jackson, the ones that I met in New Orleans. Well, one fateful evening in July of 1971, our shvartze friend D.J. pulled a fast one on us. If it was actually planned, then it is perhaps the greatest practical joke anyone has ever pulled off. Of course, if it was just an accident as he to this day claims, then it’s just a really hilarious mistake, although it wasn’t at the time.

The four of us were out on the town exploring Bourbon Street and the surrounding alleys and side streets. I was actually hoping against hope to pass a Synagogue for some potential southern Jewish feasting, but there are not as many Jews in NOLA as one would think. Imagine what we must have looked like: Three very Jewish vampires and their shvartze friend roaming the streets. We were like the rabbinical version of the “Rat Pack,” Shlomo being Peter Lawford, of course, since he was always so smooth. Jerry was Dean Martin, partly because of his fondness for Manischewitz martinis. I was obviously Sinatra because, after all, I’m sexy. I’ll give you three guesses who D.J. was and the first two don’t count.

Our pursuit of quality feasting was not panning out, so we collectively decided to head to the airport and catch a red-eye back to New York. We were all in agreement that in lieu of proper feasting, Chinese food would work just as well. There’s one thing you should know about Jews, vampire or not: when the craving for kosher Chinese hits, nothing else will do and there is nothing that can keep us from it.

Anyway, D.J. was not raised a vampire. He is a convert—a recent one, in fact, by vampire standards, but he is also very well traveled and quite wealthy. He has made it his point over the years to purchase homes in multiple cities around the globe. He had actually just recently purchased a home in Canarsie, in Brooklyn, and we decided that his place would be our base of operations for the following evening.

Walking around Brooklyn with D.J. was quite interesting, to say the least. He was born and raised in the very deep south and had the accent to match. This made him almost impossible to understand, especially when he was drunk, but it also made him stand out in an urban metropolis like Brooklyn. What was even funnier was when he decided to be bar mitsvahed and he had to recite his
haftorah
in front of the congregation.
Oy gevalt!

Once we had settled down at his place, we decided to nap and D.J. announced that he had found the best kosher Chinese restaurant in all of New York and had already made reservations for nine pm. We all woke around six thirty, and before any of us knew what was happening, Jerry had already started us on a steady diet of Manischewitz martinis.

“I’m telling you,
boychiks
,” D.J. liked to call us that, “Hunan Hyrum’s is the best Chinese in the world! Wait until you taste the food!” We continued to drink for a couple of hours and he repeated this statement over and over again. By the time we stumbled out to the restaurant, none of us were feeling any pain. We were incredibly drunk, and even hungrier.

We ordered everything on the menu—ribs, dumplings, rangoons, lo mein. I remember thinking how clever it was of the establishment to name the entrees after dishes that were all strictly taboo in Jewish law. Pork spareribs? Pork fried rice? Shrimp in lobster sauce? This was genius. It made you feel like you were doing something wrong without the guilt of actually doing it. You can call it pork, but if it isn’t pork, then you’re good. The food was amazing! Four hours we continued to eat until we were politely asked to leave. We packed up our doggy bags, made arrangements for delivery at noon, and dragged our bloated, food-drunk bodies back to D.J.’s place.

The next morning his living room looked like an opium tent full of nice Jewish boys who were unwittingly strung out on the forbidden fruit. Being the most coherent of the group, I answered the door when the doorbell rang. It was the delivery boy showing up promptly with the noon order we had placed the night before. I paid him and tipped him generously for his troubles. Always be good to the delivery boy; he spends way too much time alone with your food.

I closed the door and headed back to the living room, holding the bag close to my face to smell the intoxicating aromas working their way out, when I noticed something curious. The writing on the side of the bag did not read “Hunan Hyrum’s.” Rather, it distinctly said “Ho-Nan-Hara’s,” a local establishment that specifically specialized in the preparation of all things pork.

D.J., to my initial horror, had brought us to the wrong restaurant. Whether this was truly an accident, or he was too drunk to know better, or he just thought that it would be funny and was really longing for the pork-eating days of his youth, I’ll never know.

I looked around the room and saw Shlomo snoring away happily with pieces of shredded pork clinging to his chin. An empty box of boneless spareribs was clutched in Jerry’s comatose hand. Bones lay scrambled across the coffee table in front of a smiling D.J. like some voodoo priest’s readings. “I told you the food was good,” he said, and then noticed the writing on the bag. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

“You tell me, you fucking shmuck!” I yelled. “This was not a kosher restaurant!” At that exact moment, Jerry woke up and asked, “What’s the mishegas?”

“Genius over here brought us to the wrong place last night! We were all eating real pork last night!” I screamed, mortified.

“Oh, I thought it was something important,” Jerry said. “Try to keep it down; I have to sleep off this hangover. Tell me when the delivery arrives.” Jerry just doesn’t get it sometimes.

D.J. sat there with a sort of mischievous look on his face. I remember him telling all of us how delightful the taste of pork had been before the days of his conversion. Was this a planned thing, or was it really because he was just so damned drunk that he did not know any better? I came to the realization that I didn’t give a shit. It was unbelievably good.

I guess I’ll never know the whole truth about that fateful night, but I won’t hold a grudge against D.J. for his faux pas; for a Jew, this is a feat in itself. I can tell you this, however: Jerry and Shlomo, once they sobered up, were enraged and vowed to hold it against him for a lifetime, which in vampire terms is a pretty long time.

Ever since that fateful night in July of 1971, I have been a full-blown pork addict. Whether this was just some really insensitive practical joke, or it was in fact a mistake brought on by alcohol, doors were opened to me that evening. I realized that pork was one of the most glorious things that anyone could put in his mouth when prepared properly, and it also opened the doors for my own personal feasting. No longer would I have to restrict myself to the nice Jewish girl. Now, everybody was fair game. All races, nationalities, religious orientations—except the Muslims, of course—were now a smorgasbord of delight for me to sample. This is what being a vampire is all about. But how do I reconcile the fact that I am kosher and a lover of non-kosher food? How do I look myself in the mirror every morning and not be disgusted by what I see? How do I keep this secret from Bubbe?

That scares the shit out of me. If she ever finds out, I’m dead. Don’t kid yourself; you would be dead too. You would be put on her permanent shit list for knowing and not telling her, and that is one list you do not want to be on.

Jerry and Shlomo have lightened up a bit on D.J. over the years, and from time to time I even run into them in Canarsie. We all know why they are there. They’ll claim to be doing something else, but I know that they are on a mission to visit Ho-Nan-Hara’s. The food really is that good.

So there it is, my friends—my dirty pork secret. Please, let’s keep this between us. I cannot reiterate this enough: if Bubbe finds out, we’re all dead! Remember, I can still pay you a little visit for some late-night feasting. It doesn’t matter anymore if you are kosher or not, but for argument’s sake, are you?