The Escape Key, What Does It Do
“A funny escape story. Ha! I love laughs.”
(Ed. note: In 2011, I was asked by a friend to participate in a storytelling show for a Jewish cultural organization. The theme was “escape.” Here’s a transcription of the notes I took while trying to come up with an “escape” story.)
Running away
Exodus from enslavement to freedom
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
Escapism: trying to blot out reality by indulging in destructive behaviors
The escape key, what does it do?
The time I escaped from the creepy guy in his car by Sutton Place Park
The time I wanted to escape from Matt Cooper’s brother-in-law
The time I ran away at the age of nine
The time I tried to run away at the age of seven
I could make whatsername, the girl I ran away with, now I can’t remember, the adopted one; I could make her a Jew. Man, why can’t I remember her name? It was right there until I started to look for it. Kathy? (Ed. note—Mary.)
More about my in-laws? I’ve mined them for all they’re worth.
Disney World, and my love for it. Someone asked me how I felt about Walt Disney being an anti-Semite. He wasn’t an anti-Semite! And his head was not cryogenically frozen. And so what if it was? Is it hurting you?
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After six months with my boyfriend Matt, I was finally meeting the family. “I have to warn you about my family,” he said in the car. Isn’t that how all family meetings start, with the warning? “They might say something…ignorant.”
“Okay.” I knew his family were Catholics; generally, you don’t wind up with five brothers and sisters unless someone’s a Catholic. And I knew that Matt had more than his share of Catholic guilt, which was all expressed in his sex life.
His mother was mean. You could tell by the smile. It wasn’t a nice smile; it was so unfriendly, I wondered how she dared show it to the world. It was a smile that said, “I can’t wait to make you uncomfortable; I’m really going to enjoy it.” She had a dog that snapped, a sleek, black and brown mutt with permanently bared teeth, like hers were.
“Watch him,” she said gleefully. “He bites.”
I wanted to make a good impression on the family; at the same time, I knew it didn’t matter for shit. Matt didn’t like his parents, though he feared his mother, she didn’t rule his life anymore. He was going to date whoever he wanted to date, and the fact that I was a Jew only made me more appealing. So the idea was just to live through the afternoon; if I managed to make them not hate me even a little bit, it would have been a success.
“So you’re Jewish,” his mother said, grinning.
“Well, yes, sort of. My mother was adopted and raised by a Jewish couple, but she wasn’t born Jewish. And
—
Ooh, my mother. Yeah, let’s write about her. She was adopted to a Jewish family, who she couldn’t wait to escape. Now she is married to a man she met while trading in her old car; he is a car salesman, and they have a picture of the Pope in their house. Fuck you, Mom, you suck, and you abandoned me long before I abandoned you. Yeah, let’s not write about her.
My father’s escape? I don’t know nearly enough about it. And did he ever escape? I wonder. Yom Kippur is on Thursday, I think; make sure to call and wish him a good year.
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE 100 PERCENT TRUE. That’s what I have to keep telling myself. I can fudge it a little. So Matt and I were supposed to stay over and see his sister the next day, but we faked a toothache and got out of there? No. Escape should be funny, a caper. An adventure.
I should read the part of the Bible that has to do with Exodus. Why? What the fuck would it tell me?
It doesn’t have to be autobiographical. Oh for Chrissakes, of course it does, that’s what people want from a storytelling show. But yeah, I could make it about my mom.
How does she finally escape? She gets married a few times, to three Jews, then to Dave Malley, who was the worst. But at least she broke free of the Jews, for whatever that was worth.
I wonder if the Jews ever said anything about the possibility of escaping versus the idea that you never can. Free will vs. determinism. Where do the Jews fall on that one?
My mother was sixteen years old when she eloped to Delaware with a boy from her block. It was the only way she knew how to get out of the house – get married – and so married she got, a bunch of times, but let’s start with Husband One. They were neighbors in the Bronx
Escape from my grandmother’s house. My mother escaping my father in the middle of the night, taking me on that bus to New York. How did we get to the bus stop? I wonder.
IT JUST HAS TO BE TWO PAGES, THAT’S ALL. A funny escape story. Ha! I love laughs. But then it has to be poignant, too. Who said I wasn’t a hack? Look at me, trying to reverse engineer something. What have I escaped? Well, duh, I ran away a bunch of times. I should ask T. how Jew-y they need this to be. But I already know; they need it to be Jew-y!
Jews don’t try to convert you, and they don’t try to keep you. You want to ruin your life? Go right ahead. But you’ll never escape being a Jew. You’ll never escape that last name, or that bulb of flesh at the end of your nose; you’ll never escape the dread, the angst, the pessimism.
A caper, that’s what I want to write. But when have I ever been involved in a caper? What have I escaped? Mental illness, to some degree. My abusive home, wah wah.
Pink Panther style schemes, people left naked in the elements. Punishment. The only way to escape was to graduate. My mother knew a thing or two about escaping.
I keep feeling like it’s going to come to me any second, or at all.
Could I work on something else for a while? A blog post, maybe?