Queerspawn in Love: A Memoir

1

December 2001

Home in California for winter break during my sophomore year of college, I’d spent the past three semesters at NYU trying to slough off any remaining high school naïveté through a formula of one-night stands, student poverty, and poor decision making.

My borrowed ID didn’t fly in the Bay Area, which meant I was confined to house parties. Luckily, those had become novel again, since they didn’t exist in my New York life. I was invited by an acquaintance to a shindig up in the Berkeley Hills at a craftsman house on a tree-lined street—an unassuming home for which the owners had probably paid the equivalent of what someone outside of Northern California would pay for a mansion, thanks to inflated local real estate costs.

Someone’s parents’ home, the wood-shingled bungalow spoke ambivalently of wealth. In the driveway, a forest-green, 1970s Volvo shared space with a lightly used Honda Civic sporting a Sierra Club sticker. From the look of the yard, the owners had told the gardeners that they wanted to preserve the natural beauty of the space.

Inside the house there was antique furniture, hardwood floors that creaked, loads of books, well used but pricey appliances in a remodeled kitchen, and ethnic art in each room. It was a house full of pieces that didn’t really fit, an unplanned shabby chic in which nothing matched.

Walking in, I recognized almost everyone as a member of my tribe. We were upper-middle-class Jews in thrift-store clothing, overachievers, who’d gone to Hebrew school together through high school, despite the overhanging drifts of pot smoke we hung out beneath. What might have served as masks of rebellion else-where—the weed, the hip-hop—here were aped echoes of our parents’ tastes. We stole from their stashes to get high, and our rap music was our equivalent of the African masks the host’s mother had carefully placed on her walls. Here, if you really wanted to freak your parents out, you voted Republican.

Heading into the living room, I approached a wooden table strewn with handles of cheap liquor where people were milling about. Red plastic cups—how nostalgic and quaint, I thought as I took one. I scanned the room, priming myself for some good gossip.

In one cluster, kids in sweaters were talking about what they’d been up to at college, sharing about life outside of Berkeley. We were, as a group, arriving at an awareness of the bubble, aka the noticeable difference between the Bay Area and the rest of the world.

It’s kind of amazing to see how quickly you can give into the prevailing apathy and ethos. I never thought I’d shop at Walmart, but three semesters into U of M and I’m beat, said one liberal refugee with a hyphenated last name.

I cocked my head toward the conversation on the other side of me.

Isaac and Rachel B. broke up, I heard—that sucks, huh? But I guess being that far away at school and all . . . they had to drive sooooo far back and forth to see each other, so it kind of makes sense.

The gossip-bearing girl sipped from her drink and tucked her hair behind her ear. A boy in a plaid shirt passed her a blunt, which she passed to the person next to her. I took my place in the circle.

The subject turned to the war gearing up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unlike in New York, where even hipsters were taking comfort in the flag, here there was a liberal uniformity to the discussion. No one supported going into Iraq, no one believed there were weapons of mass destruction.

I bragged that I had been out protesting the war not three days after 9/11. "They printed a photo of me and my roommate wearing big black signs that said, OUR GRIEF IS NOT A CRY FOR WAR in the British Marie Claire, I boasted. You can tell it’s us, even though the photo was taken from behind, because of our backpacks."

Whoa, you were there, huh? A guy in an A’s hat who’d stayed in state for school looked at me with curiosity. What was that like?

September 11, 2001, is our generation’s Kennedy assassination—our Where were you when it happened? moment.

Uh . . . fine, I guess. I shrugged. Weird. We had school off for like a month.

I recounted that back in New York, vigiling had become, for a time, the hip social activity. People gathered spontaneously with candles and pictures in public places and mourned, en masse. The fever-pitched emotion scared me, and I couldn’t stand the immediate war mongering—the calls for revenge and instant security, the promises made to get those who did this.

Here people understood what I was talking about. Here we were all the children of progressive intellectuals. We grew up attending communist party meetings, eating tofu, and boycotting grapes in solidarity with the farm workers. If not quite that radical, our parents were at least university professors. We were the children of those who rode the revolution’s wave until it broke on the shores and they set up camp there. It was a comfortable homogeny.

You know we are going to hella hooride Iraq for all their oil. Their janky-ass tanks won’t stand a chance, contributed another Jew with a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor in hand.

Then, an interruption: Speaking of wars. Did you hear Lior Gold is in town?

Alicia Feldman’s mention of that name made my insides light up like a pinball machine.

You don’t say?

My mind conjured up Lior Gold, whose leg I used to rub under the table as a distraction from Torah study. Lior Gold, who, during text analysis of the Old Testament and Talmud, our holy books in front of us on the shared table, watched me steal sideways glances at him. Lior Gold, whose response was to raise his eyebrows in a gesture that was part surprise, part mischievous suggestion. Lior Gold, who’d skipped a grade and used the extra time to move away and join the Israeli Army.

I heard he’s part of an elite combat unit, Alicia continued, her eyes twinkling as she said it.

Not many Berkeley boys joined the army. When Lior did, the synagogue started including his protection in their weekly prayers.

Not that everyone thought Israel was behaving well. In the Bay, the old adage of two Jews, three opinions definitely applied, especially where Israel was involved. Former draft dodgers and pacifists almost came to blows outside shul during debates. With our collective ambivalent pride over Lior being a soldier, was it a case of hate the sin, love the sinner? I’m not sure.

Here is what do I know: When Alicia said that Lior was in town, none of this was on my mind. For all my antiwar posturing, the facts remained the same. My uniform fetish had kicked in. And thanks to being raised in the gay community, I knew what that was. All those poor ladies with firemen calendars have no idea. I wonder if they have ever given thought to what their attraction is about, as maybe I should have.

Lior Gold. Might as well have been named Lolita.

Back at home the next day, I looked up the number of Lior’s best friend, Noah, in my trusty alumni ledger. Thank god he and I had gone to the same dorky private school. In the same fashion that my college was referred to as NYJew, my high school, CPS, was known as Can’t Play Sports.

I dialed Noah’s number while I figured out how to phrase the invitation in my head. Hey Noah, it’s me . . . I began in my mind, picturing the studious young man with the mop of brown hair setting aside his video game controller to answer the phone. Noah Reichenberg was the one person I could think of who could deliver my own private commando to me ASAP. I had to make this work.

He picked up on the third ring. Hello?

Hey Noah, it’s me, Kellen.

Hey Kellen, what’s up? he said, clearly surprised to hear from me. Though CPS was a high school with fewer than four hundred kids, we weren’t close friends, per se.

It was silent for a second, and then I managed to say, Do you want to come by my house tonight with Lior and smoke?

Sure, he said. He knew it was not about him, but I guess he was feeling generous because all he said was, I’ll bring him by no problem.

I was favoring just-rolled-out–of-someone’s-bed glamour as shown in flushed cheeks and slightly messy hair at the time, so I made sure my clothes were barely hanging on that evening, the strap of my top falling relentlessly from my shoulder. I pinched my cheeks and ran my fingers through the biggest tangles in my bangs and bobbed hair.

Noah and Lior came by my house after they’d each had dinner with their families. They were such good Jewish boys.

My mom is sleeping in the front bedroom, so you should come back to my room, I said in a hushed voice. We padded through the unlit living room, trying to avoid its sharp-cornered furniture.

How is your mom? Lior whispered as we reached my room and turned on the light.

Which one? I joked. The one currently sleeping in this house? She’s all right.

Okay, let’s handle the lesbians. When I was born in 1981, there were around a hundred other children of out at birth gay parents, according to COLAGE, the national organization for children with gay parents (an organization that didn’t exist until I was nine). What does that mean? It means that only a hundred or so gay folks, nationwide, had decided, already being open and out and gay and all, to have kids. (As opposed to when the kids already existed, products of earlier, straight relations and not intended queer investments.) That’s it, one hundred—just a sprinkling.

Why should anyone care? Because I’m uncharted human territory! There’s all this hoopla nowadays about gay marriage, and someday having gay parents may be about as remarkable as being left-handed, but back in my day (cue grandpa voice), having gay parents meant something.

And not only do I have lesbian parents—I have four of them. The four best moms in the whole wide world. Seriously.

For the purposes of keeping track of them and not to indicate some sort of hierarchical order, we will say that my biological mom is Mom #1, her longtime partner is Mom #2, and the other two are Mom #3 and Mom #4.

The most basic explanation goes like this: Margery (#3) and Nyna (#1) were lovers when I was born, and Helen (#4) was Nyna’s best friend. Nyna and Helen met through an ad Helen had placed in a women’s bookstore, looking for help on her ranch. The three decided to parent together, and when Nyna and Margery broke up, when I was still a baby, they all stayed family. Then, when I was five, my mom married Kyree (#2), and they were together until I was eighteen. I can’t really expect all that to make immediate sense, but I think the operative word is abundance—mother-wise.

Noah and Lior were both aware of my multitude of mothers. They may not have been able to name all four, but they knew about them. It takes me about thirty seconds into a conversation with a total stranger to bring it up. For some people it’s a fascinating topic, but since these guys had grown up in Berkeley, they found lesbians generally unremarkable.

Well, tell them all ‘hi’ for me, Lior said as he sat down on the floor.

Once in my room, I clumsily packed my swirled glass bowl, and we lounged and went about filling the place with weed smoke, just like we had in high school. Only now we were two college kids and a soldier.

As we talked about our previous year, I less-than-slyly checked Lior out—his close-shaved hair, the way his military posture hid behind the tied-dyed shirt he was wearing. I didn’t remember him having the body of a man the last time I’d seen him. His shoulders had broadened. He’d put on twenty pounds of muscle. Newly-sprouted chest hair peeked out from inside his shirt. He raised his eyebrows at me.

It had been a little over a year since we’d last seen one another.

Like him, I’d also run off to Israel after high school. My version was attempting the socialist ideal with twenty-seven other kids, the culmination of many years of being groomed by a Labor Zionist youth movement (aka Jewish hippie summer camp). My ten-month stint in the Holy Land was spent mostly in trailers in the desert, where I developed a keen dislike for the concept of consensus. There’s nothing like a seven-hour-long meeting to make one reconsider socialism altogether.

Partway through that experience, I’d managed to track Lior down and visit him, taking a much-needed break from the stifling intimacy that was communal living and the unforgiving landscape of sand dunes in the south.

He was studying Hebrew in an ulpan program up north on a wealthy kibbutz. The greenness of the land around made it seem all the richer. Green grass is one of life’s greatest luxuries. I told him as much. I probably talked a lot while he listened.

On that beautiful, sunny day, we ate ice cream in the neighboring town of Zichron Ya’akov, known for its artists. The streets were lined with multi-story stone houses cut into the hillsides. The dessert came served in the hull of the fruit of the flavor you ordered—lemon in a lemon, cantaloupe in its half dome. Our spoons flirted in the pith.

He was making big decisions about staying in Israel and going into the army. I’d spent the past six months dissecting the political situation with too much input from too many people, so we didn’t talk politics. We didn’t talk about the future. Instead, he told me about dressing up the cacti they grew in the kibbutz garden in outfits made of cotton balls and felt, and I complained about the uptight girls in my group and the menial jobs I had to do on my kibbutz, like cleaning chicken feeders. Every once in a while I would look over and there he would be, looking back at me. Attentive. Solid. Sweet.

That night we slept side by side in his little twin bed, fully clothed, under the pretense that there was nowhere else to put me.

We’re friends right? It’s no big deal, I said, edging my body infinitesimally closer. This was total subterfuge—and bad behavior, since I had a boyfriend at the time.

My body primed, I only finally drifted off after hours of lying still, waiting to see if anything would happen.

I can’t imagine you smoke much these days, I said to Lior, watching him fill his chest with air sucked from the pipe we passed between us.

Naw, my commander would kill me if he found out about this, but actually they don’t really test us. Maybe they would rather not know.

So, what’s the army like? I crossed my legs and leaned toward him.

Well, it depends on what part you’re talking about. It feels funny to be out of uniform, wearing this, and to not have my gun on me. He smiled at me.

The more he talked about the army—the heavy lifting, the long marches they took with stretchers, and the physical trials—the more I desired him. I could barely run around the block, and here he could carry a guy on his shoulder for over a mile.

Tell me more. You said you’re a machine gunner?

Yeah, it’s called being a Negevist, but mostly these days I’m sitting around getting fat, guarding the Lebanese border. I eat a lot of chips.

I could listen to him talk about the army for hours. I loved all the Hebrew words and the way he seemed so accustomed already to military life. It was like a movie.

Tell me more about those chips.

Noah gamely put up with us as we carried on our flirtation. He was studying neuroscience, so I’m sure he was doing formulas in his head or something; also, I was keeping them both very stoned. Regardless, he didn’t try to participate in the conversation. As we conversed, he stared politely into space.

How’s college life treating you? Lior asked me.

The truth was, I was feeling rather unmoored.

You know, I’m studying theater. Originally I’d planned to study political science somewhere respectable, possibly Ivy League, but my moms sat me down and said, ‘We think you should study drama. Follow your heart.’ That’s so like them. It’s not so bad, though, easier than writing essays. We roll around on the floor a lot. They put me in the studio program with all the weirdos—the Experimental Theater Wing.

Imagine that.

I laughed. He smiled. His eyes crinkled when he smiled.

In the army do they have generalizations like ‘the weirdo studio,’ or whatever? I played with my hair, ruffling my bangs.

"Yeah—like, the paratroopers are all tzahov, yellow, like they’re all Ashkenazi white boys, but, like, Golani, my unit, it’s the unit that cab drivers and bus drivers rep, they all have Golani stickers on their windshields. It’s the branch of the people. The motto is Golani Sheli, which means ‘My Golani.’"

Later I would learn that the symbol of his unit was a green tree on a gold background. So peaceful, deceptively so. But back then I asked, Why’d they put you there? He had classic Eastern European good looks—strong jaw, dark features, a young Patrick Dempsey type.

I guess they didn’t need me in the paratroopers.

They missed out not taking you. You know, I bet my theater program is a lot like the army because we also do a lot of crazy physical exercises, like power yoga, and we do intense group work—like, aren’t we both in a group of seventeen?

He nodded yes and smiled and I continued drawing parallels.

I bet we are both sick of some of the people by now, and I feel like I’m learning this whole new language too. Like with you and all the army acronyms. Right now we are learning to dance like the fluids of the body.

He outright laughed at me. Body fluids? he repeated, as Noah started to pay attention, momentarily, upon hearing science come into play.

"Yeah, like arterial fluid goes boom, boom, boom—I was stamping my foot on the floor in rhythm—and fascia, the lining around the cells, dances all dramatic—you know, big sweeping gestures." I got up and swept my arms toward the ceiling, then dropped them with a flourish at my side.

I can’t wait to tell Menachem, our medic, how blood dances, Lior said, grinning. I showed him how cranialsacral fluid boogied, too.

It was getting late.

Well, I should go, Noah said, standing up. He looked at Lior. But don’t let that keep you from staying. Behind him, my high school style was reflected on the walls in dried flowers, Nirvana posters, and a stolen street sign that read DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD. My mom had yet to take any of it down.

No, I have a lot to do tomorrow, so I’ll head out with you, Lior responded, rising to his feet.

I could give you a ride, I offered. If you wanted to stay? I was sitting on a bed with unmade covers. I did all but pat the mattress beside me.

The question sat in the air for a moment. Crap! Distraction? Excuses? I was at a loss for something witty to say.

No. I should probably go, he said.

I couldn’t come up with any further diversions, and they headed from my room in the back of the house toward the front door and the stairs. I caught them at the porch. I hugged Noah and he started down the stairs. I went to hug Lior.

It was great seeing you, I said, pressed against him.

The time had come. As our bodies began to separate I looked at him expectantly. We were so close I could feel his breath on the tip of my nose. His lips were no longer in focus as I moved my head toward him. At the last second I closed my eyes, and for the briefest, electric moment, we made contact.

I opened my eyes to see him bounding down the stairs. It started with a kiss that barely got planted.

2

Nascence

Standing alone on my front porch, I thought, Well,