Our Hairy Jewish Bodies, Ourselves - Page 4

We both come from the same Eastern European stock; two guys whose families crawled out of the mud of Ukrainian shtetls to eventually deposit their hirsute offspring in the United States, where we unashamedly maintain our burly physiques. Here are two Yids who’ll never get a back waxing. Roz Chast may find us horrifying, but that’s her problem, not ours.

I can acknowledge that a hairy Jewish body offers loads of amusement. The look intersects with my daily routine in odd ways. Take medical procedures like EKGs. When I turned 50 and revised a life insurance policy, an insurance company operative came to my apartment to administer an EKG. Her first try failed because the electrical leads wouldn’t stay connected to my chest. They floated atop a follicular ocean, not touching any bit of skin.

Gallantly, I offered to shave some strategic patches so she could get me hooked up. She agreed, so I spent 15 minutes in the bathroom hacking at the underbrush until I burrowed down to relatively bare skin. The EKG attachments worked well this time, although I fell into a yowling Steve Carell mood when I yanked them off my newly scraped flesh. Ouch! I can’t say this was exactly fun, but the episode amused me, and the hair grew back more luxuriant than ever, as I knew it would from past medical procedures.

The most satisfying affirmation of my look came way back in May 1987, when somebody went beyond furtive looks to poke me in wonder. I was attending the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival then. The fun, the sun, the music and the crawfish made me groggy by mid-afternoon, so I stretched out on the ground, hat over my eyes.

I had dozed off when somebody started playing with my feet. I opened my eyes and saw two young women sitting down by my feet. "You're lucky I have such an amiable disposition," I mumbled. "Did you pass out?" asked one of the women in a heavy Southern accent. She had dark hair and said her name was Monie. "I'm just tired," I said. "Let's rub his stomach! That will wake him up," said Monie. She did that and was agog at what she found. “Why you are just the hairiest man ah’ve ever seen,” she exclaimed.

They had come to the festival from Mississippi with a male friend for the music and to see the sites. Well, they got a sight to see in me. Monie, the chattier one, kept running her finger down my chest. I didn’t mind her frisky explorations. “I bet you moan,” I told Monie, but my Mississippi Queen was too sloshed to get my drift.

Article Author: Van Wallach

Van Wallach is a writer in Connecticut. He is a native of Mission, Texas and a graduate of Princeton University. His interests in Judaism and languages such as Spanish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and Portuguese often color his essays, so keep your dictionaries at hand. …

Visit Van Wallach's author page — Van Wallach's Blog